It’s almost here – my favorite holiday, and I’m so looking forward to it! Spending a day with people I love, cooking, laughing and eating food made with the utmost care – it’s just such a special day.

I’ve decided to do an understated nail art for this tutorial, instead of something more obvious, and I’ll tell you why: First, we did a silly cute tutorial for Halloween, so it’s time to grow back up with something a bit more mature.

Second, it’s finally cold out, which means it’s officially appropriate to wear super dark nail polish – my fav! So I busted out this luscious glossy black and paired it with a delicate gold to make an abstract interpretation of Pilgrim buckles on every finger.

Step 1. Paint your nails a rich, shiny black.

Step 2. Using a small art brush – yes this is the only hard step – free hand a rectangle in the middle of your finger using the gold. I started with the two parallel vertical lines and then connected them, horizontally.

Step 3. I chose to switch between wide and tall rectangles every other finger, to pull this look away from being too obvious or repetitive. For the thumb I chose a square and added a dot in the middle (silly me, I forgot to take an individual shot of it, but you can see it peeking out behind the persimmon above!).

The colors, combined with the graphic boxes switching widths create a manicure that feels new, elegant and festive with so little to it – minimalist nail art! In a time where ornate overloaded nails are flooding the scene, this feels refreshing, and it surprised me with how much I really liked them. This is the classiest pilgrim buckles have ever been, don’t you think?